"The Maze of Chinese Characters" adopts an artistic approach to present Chinese characters. In accordance with the morphological features of each Chinese character, it incorporates them into a lovely witty story, giving us a charming rendering of the lives of working people through three leading roles: Grandpa, the ancestor of Chinese culture, and two children. Each group of characters is introduced in one story and each story is a separate chapter.
With the aid of high-tech visual effects, the combination of virtual reality and two-dimensional, three-dimensional animation, it transforms the stiff and boring characters into vivid figures and interrelated scenarios. It achieves visualization, livelihood and funniness of Chinese learning, freeing us from the tedious and painful process of memorizing horizontal strokes, vertical strokes, falling strokes, turning strokes and simple dots in the traditional way. By mastering new characters, learners will feel refreshed physically and mentally while enriching knowledge in the meantime, which can be seemingly effortless but surprisingly fruitful.
Each episode of pictographic characters lasts 6 minutes, presenting 4-6 Chinese characters. This section of the series introduces about 200 frequently used Chinese characters, in an attempt to enable the beginners not only to know the characters but also to master the Chinese phonetic alphabet and stroke order of each character. It could easily evolve the Chinese learners to enjoy the learning experience immensely of "recognizing the characters and understanding the texts".
In the year of 2004, The Maze of Chinese Characters, won the award for the Best Original Idea at Hollywood International Film and Television Festival.